Crowding

Casey Londergan| February 21, 2010

Heard most of great self-assembled platform session this morning on biomolecular dynamics in crowded (cellular-like) environments, organized by Margaret Cheung. It was very well-attended, and there was some talk of trying to use the forum as a starting point for a new subgroup (using the IDP subgroup, see below) as an example.

The characterization of much of traditional in vitro biochemistry as “drowning enzymes” was quite striking, and it is clear from many of the examples in this session that even relatively well-characterized systems like nice, globular proteins don’t behave the way you might think, which is not all that surprising but definitely throws a wrench into a lot of “traditional biochemistry”. I am especially interested in what happens to water in these sorts of environments… some ideas popping into my head, going to write them down now.